Rudd had a different view

When she asked whether Labor had saddled "the nation with a white elephant", he said it was a "grossly unfair" question.

"… because what we launched as the National Broadband Network is fibre optic to the premises nationwide because it would be that model which delivered the revenue stream long term to make the NBN financially sustainable, and it was that on which it was modelled," Mr Rudd said.

"So, what did Abbott and Turnbull then do?

"They turned it on its head and made it fibre optic to the node, the mystical point somewhere in the neighbourhood.

"So in other words they changed the model completely.

"And the reason why people are not taking it up is because of what we find is that people don't see the advantage in terms of reliable bandwidth and band speed on the ground."

He went on to reject the Prime Minister's claims.

"You changed horse in mid-stream," he said.

"What we had planned and began to rollout was perfectly designed for this nation's needs fibre optic to the home, to the premises, to the shop, to the school, to the hospital.

"You cut that off — frankly the changes lie all on your head."

What do the experts say?

RMIT's School of Engineering associate professor Mark Gregory says both sides are to blame.

"I think that the approach taken by Labor wasn't the best approach that was on offer, but it was a viable approach," he said.

"The problems that we're seeing today stem back to the decision by the Coalition in 2013 to change the NBN rollout from fibre to the premises to the obsolete fibre to the node.

"And of course by doing that they've broken the business model and so the NBN Co is now looking for a handout."

So what is the best model and what happens now?

"The best model is the model that's been adopted in the United Kingdom and also in New Zealand, and that was where the incumbent telco, in our case Telstra, was split into two companies…" he said.

"It took two years for the New Zealand government to split Telecom New Zealand, a lot of discussion and a lot of arm bending, but eventually the government got their way.

"The problem in Australia is that governments of both persuasions, both Labor and Liberal, bottled it and weren't prepared to do what was necessary for the future of this nation.

"So we're going to have to go back to the very beginning and have to split Telstra in two.

"And then the wholesale arm of the new company would then take ownership of the NBN.

"Because currently the way things are, the Government would have to write off about $30 billion from the NBN, and so the only way forward is to actually go back to the very beginning, split Telstra in two, and get [it to] build and operate the NBN."

Since the airing of the gut-wrenching documentary Leaving Neverland, many of us have wrestled with an uncomfortable, yet essential question: given everything we know, can we continue listening to Michael Jackson's music?